Just 20 of our favourite Terry Pratchett quotes

David Harris. Updated May 21st, 2022

We don’t need a particular reason to share some great quotes from Terry Pratchett, so here are 20 of our absolute favourites…

1. Goodness is about what you do. Not what you pray to.

2. Pets are always a help in times of stress. And in times of starvation, too, of course.

3. Inside every sane person there’s a madman struggling to get out.

4. Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.

5. It’s still magic even if you know how it’s done.

6. I’d rather be a rising ape than a falling angel.

7. It’s not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren’t doing it.

8. The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it’s as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.

9. Human beings make life so interesting. Do you know, that in a universe so full of wonders, they have managed to invent boredom.

10. Most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally evil, but by people being fundamentally people .

11. The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp.

12. Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces.

13. Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.

14. The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

15. It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it’s called Life.

16. In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods. They have not forgotten this.

17. Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.

18. Give a man a fire and he’s warm for the day. But set fire to him and he’s warm for the rest of his life.

19. A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.

20. Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.

And here is the official Good Omens trailer to make you wish it was Friday already